


Frames

by morrezela



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Arranged Marriage, Bigotry, Forced Marriage, Homophobia, M/M, Melodrama, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 13:21:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1940’s Melodrama: When Jensen Ackles was born, the doctors didn’t think that he’d ever see his first birthday. When he was forced to marry a stranger, Jensen didn’t want to make his twentieth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frames

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Pre-mpreg, arranged marriage, bullying, bigotry. Younger!Jensen, Older!Jared. Also, historical inaccuracies will probably be found.
> 
>  
> 
> A/N: This fic was written for spn_illuminated. The art prompt was done by divendfly.
> 
> Prompt Summary: Pictures of young Jared and Jensen, a marriage license with their names and the year of 1947, and a cracked framed picture of Jensen
> 
> Along with the art prompt there were artist likes of: Jensen-centric fic, bottom!Jensen, younger Jensen is fine, mpreg is fine. I think that I managed to get most of them worked into the story. :)
> 
> This fic kicked my ass. It was originally supposed to be even longer, but life interfered. I ended up calling a halt to the writing because the story wasn’t going to get finished on time if I didn’t. So I had to go back and rework parts of it to make it a complete enough fic to post as it was.
> 
> The whole concept of the 40’s and a sort mpreg disease twist grabbed my brain. I wanted to make something different from the concept, and I only regret that I couldn’t get enough steam earlier on in the process to get it done right.
> 
> All mistakes you find are my own.

When Jensen was born, the doctors didn’t think that he’d ever see his first birthday. He was early and dreadfully so. His mother prayed over him, and his father wept and somebody somewhere heard their prayers because Jensen’s tiny lungs continued to draw breath day after day.

He proved them wrong, but all through his adolescence he was ill and skinny. He never could put on any weight, and as other boys played ball in sandlots and raced on foot through the streets of town, Jensen buried his head in comic books and adventure novels and even, much to his older brother’s chagrin, text books.

When his family took trips to the beach, Jensen invariably had to huddle underneath the umbrella that his mother brought with so that he would keep from turning red as Fourth of July sparklers, and his ever present reading material would be with him even there. Swimming in the surf was tiring, and his lungs always started to ache after a while.

If Jensen were pressed, he’d say that his early years of childhood were miserable.

Then the war came, and he didn’t have chance to be miserable anymore - at least, not because of his own situation. His brother was old enough to be drafted, and his family ended up joining all sorts of organizations to keep the war effort going as their way of supporting him. Jensen went around the neighborhood collecting scrap metal and old comic books from the very boys who picked on him, and for a while he was happily immune to any taunts or bullying because the whole world seemed to have something better to be doing.

Then his world changed.

His father ended up taking a promotion to a larger branch office of the Morgan Bank, and Jensen’s family packed up and moved away from their sleepy, little suburb to a bigger, more expensive one. Jensen was still pale, shy and awkward, but he was also a virtual unknown in the school. So he made a few more friends and wasn’t quite the outcast that he had been before.

Then, sometime after his sixteenth birthday, he caught a stomach bug that just wouldn’t quit. His mother took him to the doctor. Even though he couldn’t overhear any of the whispers and his mom kept telling him that everything was going to be fine, Jensen knew that all of the additional tests they did couldn’t possibly be normal. He didn’t hear anything that day. He didn’t hear anything for weeks until he came home from school one day to find his mother sobbing, clutching the phone to her chest.

For a heart wrenching moment, Jensen thought for certain that his brother had died. His mind kept skipping over the latest news reels that he’d seen at the cinema that weekend. He kept wondering where his brother might’ve been that he could’ve been killed and kept thinking about how the bad news always came via telegram in the pictures.

“Jensen, baby,” his mother had called, stretching her hand out to him.

He had gone over, helped her off the floor and let her cry on his shoulder. Even at sixteen he’d been tall enough for her to lean against. He was skinny and had never been the healthiest of boys, but being tall ran in the family. Even his generally inferior health wasn’t enough to keep his form from growing.

“It’s going to be okay, Momma,” Jensen assured her even though he didn’t believe it.

“My poor baby,” she sobbed again and again.

When she finally got herself under control, Jensen’s mother had called the bank and demanded that his father come home from work. Jensen had sat with her while they waited. He could still remember the whiteness of her face and the way that her lips had pinched together in an effort to keep more tears from spilling.

It was when his father came home that Jensen found out that she was crying over him and not his brother. He was abnormal. Mutated. Wrong. He was the result of a virus that his father and other soldiers had picked up when they’d been overseas for the first war.

Jensen had heard about the boys who had been born with the female disease or ‘the change.’ The teachers and made them study it in school. At first it had been nothing more than an abstract worry. It was a problem that foreigners faced, not Americans. And few of those in other countries ever had to deal with it.

The war had changed that. Soldiers had come home with the contagion in their blood, and some of their sons had been born with abnormalities. The news had covered it. There had been debates about it, but Jensen had never truly been fascinated by the topic. He was far more concerned with his other books and had purposely avoided researching a subject that would only alienate him further from his peers.

But now that he knew that he suffered from the malady, his life made a little bit more sense. Many of the boys born with the female disease were unhealthy. Few made it past the first years of their lives because their bodies couldn’t handle having two reproductive systems even though neither would function until puberty.

Jensen’s recent illness was a sign that his, his female parts were starting to mature. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around the notion. It was an alien concept to him that he could carry life inside himself as well as give it to a woman. The idea wasn’t repulsive though, and he felt it best to concentrate on that more than anything else. There had been a boy two counties over who had hung himself when he found out, and Jensen had seen the grief and devastation on the boy’s aunt when she had come back from his funeral.

No, acceptance about his body would be the best thing for him. It wasn’t as if he had to choose a husband over a wife. Even if he should decide to wed another man, it was completely legal thanks to a man out in Vermont who had sued to be allowed to marry the father of his child. He said that it wasn’t the government’s place to give his child the title of bastard.

There had been arguments over it, some of them very strong, but the end result was that the man in Vermont had been allowed to marry another man. A slew of lawsuits had followed. Men complained that they shouldn’t have to prove their bearing fertility in order to wed another man. It was a private matter, and they should be allowed to marry each other without the state’s interference. Women argued that they had as much of a right to wed their own gender as men. Others argued that it was a sickness to be eradicated and bearing males should be sterilized to keep the illness from spreading to future generations.

But the end result of all the debates was that Jensen was free to marry whoever he wanted so long as that person wasn’t already married. It was rare to see such couples, but Jensen had known it was a possibility. He just hadn’t given the concept much time.

As an outsider at school, Jensen’s main thoughts had been about staying out of trouble with the other, stronger boys. He wasn’t a wuss, but he was hardly able to stand his own in a fight when younger. As he aged and became healthier, he continued his habit of staying out of trouble. There were better ways to make a point or impression than with his fists.

Jensen had been aware of his budding adulthood the same as any other teenager would be, but he hadn’t spent many hours pondering it. The girls in school paid him no heed. They were far more interested in the larger, tougher jocks who Jensen spent time trying to avoid. Sexuality had been an abstract concept to him, and his hormones had been just as likely to make him cry as arouse him.

Now that he had a reason for why his body sometimes acted strangely, Jensen couldn’t say that he favored either sex more than he ever had. He supposed that the result of having two reproductive systems meant that he was a late bloomer. Or possibly he was just confused. Life hadn’t exactly been normal for him before he found out about his difference, and now it looked as if it would only become more complicated.

At school he walked around more fearful than ever. Before he had only been the weakling. Now he was something aberrant. Sure, the civics professor taught in accordance with the governmental mandates, but there were still enough people around that didn’t agree with the new marriage laws. He was terrified of what would happen if somebody at school found out that he wasn’t quite ‘all man’ as he’d heard some of his father’s co-workers say.

When Germans declared their surrender that May, Jensen was ashamed to say that his happiness wasn’t completely because they had won the war. It wasn’t just because his brother was coming home alive. A small part of him was relieved because it was near the end of the spring term, and he would have all summer to grow and think about his situation. He figured that he was going to need all the time he could get to figure himself out.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

It was almost two years after the war ended that Jared took an assignment to go document the life and times of American suburbia. The magazine article was already written. Pat Jenkins was a real pip that way. He always liked to say that he was so good that he was ahead of the news.

Jared liked to say otherwise. But no matter how good a photographer was people still liked stories with their pictures. Readers didn’t like uncertainty. They wanted to be told what they were looking at even if the tale spun around them was false. Without Pat, Jared didn’t have a job.

Sure he could ask to be paired with a different writer, but unless he was doing a freelance piece, he was always paired with the magazine’s top writer so that the magazines would sell. After some of his photos from the war started beating out some of the older, more experienced photographers, Jared became a hot commodity on the magazine circuit. Once he was officially back in the states, he was offered a lot of money to come to World Gazette, and he had jumped at the offer.

The problem with working for so acclaimed of a magazine was that they always wanted the best. Jared didn’t have a problem with turning in new and exciting photographs. He had no quarrel with having to push himself to always excel. What he took issue with was the idea that he and Pat were the winning team. They were the headliners, and the editors and higher ups didn’t want to rock that boat.

It was creatively stifling. Pat didn’t like having to change his prewritten fiction to match the actual story. He just liked having to show up to a location to stroll around like the big shot that he was, and then go back to his plush office to edit the names on an already completed manuscript.

Jared’s job was making sure his shots backed up the generic pabulum that Pat typed up. It would be unbearable except for the fact that Pat never wrote anything that was too out there. He always wrote in general terms. Jared never had to bend the truth too far to get a shot that would work with his story.

One day, when his contract was up, Jared was going to get himself a new job. If he saved enough money, he might even try freelancing full time. No reporter to muck around with his shots, no editor to tell him to cut back on, “That art-sy fart-sy stuff, Son,” just Jared and his own vision coming to life on film.

It was a great daydream, but one that wasn’t going to become a reality if Jared didn’t start performing his actual work.

Coming into Miltonvale with his giant duffle bag full of clothing and gear was enough to draw attention to him. The suburb was middling in size, but not large enough for him to go unnoticed. It was actually better that way. It made things less awkward when approaching a subject.

Sure Jared could just go around snapping shots to get the job done, but the piece of trash that Pat had written was all about specific types of people, and there needed to be single, focused portraits to make it work. It was a gamble. Most people weren’t models and couldn’t snap out of their ingrained instinct to either scowl or smile insipidly when a camera was turned on them.

But Jared couldn’t have all of his film taken up with startled looks and suspicion either, so willing subjects it was going to have to be. Girls were always easier to net than boys. Even if their parents were preaching demure purity, they were all a bit star struck by the ladies of the silver screen. Where girls went, boys followed.

It didn’t take long to get the shots that he needed, and Jared found himself with some extra time on his hands. Sure he could have wrapped it up and asked for a partial refund on his hotel room, but the only thing that would bag him was an additional project when he returned to the news room. Worse, it could get him some extra alone time with Pat as the writer criticized Jared’s photos and bragged about his own intelligence.

There wasn’t much of personal interesting awaiting for him back at the office either. He rented a room from a widowed lady trying to raise three boys with no father. The rent wasn’t much, but neither was the room. Jared didn’t spend a lot of time there, and there were only so many photographs he could take of the town he lived in. If he was going to work on his own collection, he preferred to work on location.

The soda shop seemed like a good place to catch the local flavor. Even though there was a good sized crowd of younger kids hanging around, there were enough older people that Jared didn’t feel out of place. Besides, he enjoyed a good burger and fries.

But for all the bubble and buzz of the teenagers eating and laughing at their tables, it was the boy working the counter that grabbed Jared’s attention. He hadn’t seen the guy on previous visits, but Jared was confident that it hadn’t been an oversight on his part. The angles of his face were perfect for catching the light even in the artificial glow of a restaurant. He was tall, and the muscles in his arms bulged and flexed as he delivered orders to his customers.

If Jared had spotted him before, he would have been honor bound to try to get him to sign on to be one of the faces for Pat’s World Gazette story. With a face like an angel and the beginnings of a strapping physique, the waiter was the perfect all American male. He was what every man would aspire to be, or in Jared’s case: want.

But Jared hadn’t seen him before, and his film canisters for the magazine were already securely stored in his luggage for the trip back to the office. Not having his job as an excuse would make approaching the man harder, but not impossible.

Or so Jared thought.

Even moving to the counter to order dessert, much to the sad look of the overly perky waitress that had served him his supper, barely gained Jared any of the man’s attention. Jensen, as the boy’s nametag called him, barely made eye contact with Jared as he took his order. He disappeared before Jared could attempt small talk and came back just as quickly with the strawberry malt that Jared had ordered.

It was torture letting the ice cream in the drink half melt in an attempt to wait out other, needier customers for a chance to talk to Jensen. But Jared had learned patience in the war and refined it in a corporate office. Soon enough the rush of people left, and the soda shop quieted down to just the whispers of young lovers and the hum of the radio.

“You need anything else?” Jensen asked as he came over. He had already placed Jared’s bill by the tall, fluted glass that held his malt, and his eyes darted towards the slip as if thinking that there was something wrong with it.

“Not need, no,” Jared answered. “But I was wondering if I could talk to you.”

“Me?” Jensen asked, half glancing over his shoulder obviously checking for another person that Jared might be speaking to.

“Yes,” Jared smiled, “you.”

“I’m not interested,” Jensen immediately replied, then flushed a bright red. “I mean, I don’t want to be in a magazine.”

Jared upped the wattage of his smile a little. “Well that’s good because I’ve already finished that shoot.”

A mixture of relief and hurt flashed through Jensen’s eyes, and Jared had seen the look enough times to sympathize. Wallflowers always had that expression. On the one hand, they never wanted to be in the lime light. On the other, they were always a bit hurt that they were never picked for it.

“Oh,” Jensen said, “so what was it you wanted to ask me?”

“I’m done with the shoot for the magazine, but I’m looking at taking some more local photographs for my personal portfolio. Less traditional, more local flavor,” Jared told him.

Jensen’s face lit up a bit at that. “You’re looking for a guide?”

And no, Jared wasn’t looking for a guide. It was difficult to get lost in a suburb, and the apple pie feel of the place made him doubt that he’d get into trouble if he found the bad part of town. Even if he was underestimating his safety, locals rarely knew the best places to capture an artistic view. They were too inured to the way that everything looked. Jared had only to look at Jensen to prove that to himself. He had to be one of the best looking boys in town, yet not one of the girls had stopped by to flirt with him.

“I’m looking to take some more artistic photographs, and I’d like to take yours,” Jared said, choosing honesty over stringing Jensen along for other purposes.

Jensen’s perfectly fringed eyes flew open in shock. “Absolutely not!” his voice rang out, and several of the remaining patrons looked in his direction. He flushed and bowed his head almost immediately, trying to avoid their gazes. “I’m not doing any of that nudie stuff,” he mumbled.

“Lord have mercy,” Jared exhaled as he tried to get a grip. Sometimes people heard ‘art’ and thought ‘pervert.’ In general, Jared detested that sort of small mindedness, but the man in front of him looked young. With the way that his eyes kept darting around the room, he was probably just worried about what his peers were going to say to their parents.

“Look, Jensen,” Jared said with a controlled voice, “I’m not asking you to do anything indiscreet.”

A bark of laughter sounded in Jared’s ear at his statement.

“You better hope not. Jenny has his trousers locked up tighter than a nun’s habit, isn’t that right?” a young man about Jensen’s age commented.

Jensen flushed, but it was more anger than embarrassment that clouded over his face. “Can I get you something, Robert?” he asked, tone as cold as Jared’s malt.

“Nothing that you’re willing to give,” Robert answered, his smile stretching wide as he turned to Jared. “Jenny wants a ring on his finger before he lets a man near him. Thinks that just because he’s got lady innards that he should wait for marriage.”

Jared wasn’t sure if the astonishment he felt was more because of the way that Robert was displaying an appalling lack of manners or because of the information that the man had just imparted. Even though the laws of marriage had been changed because of the sudden birth of fertile males in the country, the population wasn’t exactly replete with them. Jared had only ever met one other, and that was on an assignment to actually cover the man’s story.

“Get out, Robert,” Jensen growled, his muscles tensing and his eyes snapping with aggression.

“I’m a paying customer,” Robert retorted.

“You’re not paying me,” Jared interjected, “and it is my conversation you’re interrupting. So I suggest you do as he asks.”

“Yeah?” Robert asked, full of teenage bravado.

Jared rose off his stool to his full height, towering over the boy. “Yes,” he answered, crossing his arms over his chest.

Robert took off without another glance.

“I could’ve handled it,” Jensen muttered sullenly.

“You shouldn’t have had to,” Jared responded.

Jensen glowered at him. “You wouldn’t say that if I was a normal guy.”

Jared tiled his head and smiled. “You aren’t normal?”

“Don’t patronize me. I know you heard what he said. You reporters aren’t stupid,” Jensen said.

Jared nodded slowly. “Well, for one thing, I’m a photographer, not a reporter. And another, I’m not seeing anything about you that is abnormal. I didn’t ask to take pictures of your innards, Jensen. I asked to take them of you.”

“Doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. Doesn’t mean that you don’t think that I’m a freak on the inside,” Jensen argued, his eyes lowered back down to the countertop as he spoke, one large hand wiping a cloth over the bright red laminate with haphazard swipes.

“You care about what I think? Then I’ll tell you that Robert is an idiot. I’ve seen war. I’ve seen the innards of more men than I care to recount, and I can tell you that all that matters when you see them is that they aren’t inside where they’re supposed to be.”

Jensen’s hand quit its movement, and he was silent for a moment before responding with, “I thought that they always say that it’s the inside that counts.”

Jared paused for a moment before he hesitantly smiled, “Was that a joke?”

The look that Jensen gave him as he looked up was devious. The sight only made Jared grin instead of smile.

“You’re a real firecracker, aren’t you?”

“He’s going to be in real trouble if he doesn’t start moving,” a man said as he came up to Jared’s stool. The man’s nametag only said, ‘Manager.’

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realize that…”

“That talking about a man’s innards in the middle of a restaurant was poor taste? You’ve got some nerve for an outsider,” the man gruffly interrupted.

Irritation welled up inside of Jared at the way that the man spoke to him, but he pushed it back down. It wouldn’t do any good to start a fight with Jensen’s supervisor. Jared would be leaving town in a few days. Jensen was going to have to stay there and live with the guy.

“I’ll just pay my tab and be going then,” he responded as he dug his wallet out and tossed a couple bills down on the counter. “Keep the change,” he told Jensen as he left. There were a lot of eyes on his back as he made his way to the door. Jared only hoped that one pair of them was the right shade of green.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

There were crazy things in life that a guy just shouldn’t do. Jensen figured that showing up at the hotel and asking for a stranger was one of those things. The town gossips weren’t even going to take a breath as soon as they found out, but if all went well, Jensen was going to be leaving in a couple of months anyway. His high school diploma was tucked safely away in his chest of drawers in his room. Nobody was going to take that away from him, not even an insulting menace like Robbie Blackwood.

Robbie, or Robert as he had insisted on being called since he graduated and became a ‘real man,’ had taken it upon himself to make Jensen’s senior year the worst one of his entire school career. Jensen could never figure out just how Robbie had managed to discover Jensen’s secret. All he knew for certain was that one day he had opened his locker and frilly, girly things came spilling out onto the floor. There were baby dolls and lipsticks and curlers and even some feminine underthings.

Jensen had at one point believed that he had left the incessant teasing behind him when his parents moved to Miltonvale. Foolishly, he had thought that the older that people grew, the more mature they became. High school taught him differently. Robert’s father was important in the community, and Robert was the captain of all of the sports teams in school. What he said went, and what he said was that Jensen should either be putting his dick to use like a real man or letting a real man put his dick to use on him.

Getting labeled an abomination wasn’t fun by any stretch of the imagination, but there was enough common sense left in the rest of the class that they didn’t use that word too often. Teachers might turn a blind eye for their star student, but they wouldn’t do it for just anybody. There were standards in the school, even if they were doubled.

But Jensen had stuck it out and graduated. He was going to college come fall, and one way or the other he was getting out of town. His parents wanted him to go to a college that was closer. Even though his health problems had all but disappeared once his system finished growing both of his reproductive organ sets, they hadn’t ever quite let go of their ingrained protectiveness for him. That protection had been a good support when Robert had started up his teasing at school, but Jensen wanted to be his own man.

Part of becoming his own man meant going somewhere more accepting of his condition. At least, that was the argument that Jensen used on his folks. There were still some universities that looked at Jensen’s kind as a liability. They figured that if he had ovaries, he should be popping out babies. And if he should be having squalling rug rats, then the only thing that he’d be doing at college was seducing one of their ‘true’ boys away from their studies.

Colleges that were located in more accepting states were known for better treatment of their ‘intergendered’ students. And sure, Jensen was only required to state his sex on the application form, but he didn’t doubt that there would be attempts from some of the more narrow minded people in his town to get word to the dean of his chosen institution about his ‘condition.’ If that happened, Jensen wanted to stack the odds in his favor by being as far away from Miltonvale and its social influence as possible.

But he was also eighteen and interested in the world. Life went beyond working at the malt shop and planning for the future. Jensen might have traveled around the whole world by a book, but actual interaction with others had always been hampered. The photographer wasn’t local. He was different and exciting. Jensen figured that it was as good an excuse as any to go looking for the man.

Less than five minutes after ringing his room, Jared was standing in the lobby, camera in hand.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

“Just relax,” Jared coached as he had Jensen move for him. He’d have to develop the film to be certain, but could already tell that the camera loved Jensen’s face. The light caught on it perfectly as the younger man shifted his position.

Sure he had some bad angles, but almost everybody did. Jared had taken enough photographs to know that there was no such thing as a perfect shot or a perfect face. The art in photography was in making it look like there was.

“I feel like a fool,” Jensen muttered as Jared crept in to correct his stance.

“You’re not,” Jared assured him. Despite falling back into traditional posing habits, Jensen was quite adept at moving into the right positions for truly artistic pictures, and Jared appreciated that. There truly wasn’t a ‘natural’ photography subject that was past the age of five. Everybody over that age seemed to get the ingrained, stiff posture and plastic smile response trained into them after that point.

“You’re supposed to smile in pictures,” Jensen pointed out.

“You’re smiling,” Jared teased as he lined his shot up.

“Not the right way.”

“Well, doing things the ‘wrong’ way is how new things get invented. Would you go to the movies if they smiled all the way through?”

“Moving pictures are different,” Jensen argued as he twisted his upper body to follow Jared’s movements.

“Stay still!” Jared ordered as Jensen’s motion put him in the perfect pose.

The click of the camera was barely audible over the thundering in Jared’s ears. That shot was going to be magic. He just knew it, and the knowledge of it made him ecstatic.

“That’s beautiful, Darlin’,” Jared drawled as he took a couple of extra shots just to make certain he got the best angle.

Jensen blushed, and for a moment, Jared’s finger hesitated on the shutter. He’d seen the effect before, but somehow it was different out in the sunlight. The pleased look on the younger man’s face made the red coloring attractive instead of uncomfortable as it had been the day before. There was nothing more than flattered embarrassment radiating off him, and Jared felt his pulse quicken just a tiny bit more than it should before he tamped down the impulse of attraction.

As beautiful as Jensen was, he was younger than Jared. Not by much, but war had a way of aging a man’s soul, and the boy in front of him was just getting ready to set off to college. There was a whole world out there for him, and that world wasn’t going to include some photographer that spent his time traveling the globe.

Still, that didn’t mean that Jared couldn’t capture that look on film and develop it so that when he was feeling lonely he could imagine a thousand scenarios where Jensen turned out to be the man of Jared’s dreams. After all, Jared spent most of his life creating stories for the magazine. There was nothing saying that he couldn’t spin one for himself.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

When Jared left Miltonvale, he never expected to see any of the people again unless he happened to be leafing through his portfolio for some reason and stumbled across one of their pictures. It was a nice enough place as far as American suburbs went, but it wasn’t the kind of place that Jared had any intention of returning to. Just because there was a boy there gifted with the bone structure of a Greek god, didn’t mitigate the rest of the place’s downfalls.

Besides, Jensen’s face greeted Jared every time that he came back from his latest trip. The photographs had come out too well for Jared to just store, and even though the frame set that had purchased was a little out of the realm of normal for Jared’s particular tastes, they certainly spiced up his little rented room. Sure Jared could have taken the pictures out of their lace matting and put them in something starker, but the flowers and leaves surrounding Jensen brought back memories of the field that they had spent that afternoon in.

Jensen’s pictures reminded Jared that he was doing his job so that he could do his art. Even though the young man probably hadn’t thought of Jared since the day they parted, Jared could still take comfort in the memories the boy had given him. Certainly the picture he was displaying wasn’t the most artistic of the bunch, but Jared doubted that his landlady would appreciate the more artistic poses that Jensen had done for him.

Even though the most clothing that Jensen had ever taken off had been his jacket and outer shirt, the nontraditional nature of the shots was enough to make many people snub them. They would need to be displayed in the right setting for the right people if Jared wanted them appreciated instead of ridiculed.

Besides, Jared was rather fond of the look that Jensen was giving him in the ‘acceptable’ photo. It was daring and impish and almost delightful in its implied wickedness. It kept him company, which always struck Jared as sad whenever he was in his room long enough to start contemplating it.

When his landlady knocked on his door one day and announced that he had a visitor, Jared hadn’t known what to expect. The punch that landed on his jaw as soon as he walked into the living room wasn’t even on his list of possibilities.

“You scum,” a low, masculine voice hissed.

The man wasn’t familiar, but Jared could guess easily enough that he had been in the war. He had the right scars and was the right age for it. That and he hit like he knew what he was doing. The impact from the blow set Jared’s ears ringing, and he was only glad that his assailant hadn’t gone for the tempting target of his nose. Jared’s landlady started shrieking in the background, but Jared ignored her in favor of trying to stand upright again.

“How do you even sleep at night? Doing that stuff to an innocent kid and running off to your metropolitan life?” the man continued, his green eyes seething with hatred as he stepped closer.

And Jared might not recognize the man, but he knew those eyes. A quick scan over the rest of the man’s features provided enough similarities that Jared felt fairly comfortable that his visitor was in some way related to Jensen. Logically that meant that he was speaking of Jensen as well, though Jared couldn’t figure out what it was that he supposedly done to the guy. Then again, some people really took exception to anything that wasn’t apple pie and ‘normal’ when it came to their artwork.

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but…”

“You ruined my little brother’s life!” the man interrupted. “You and your dirty pictures!”

“I don’t know what you were told, but I never took one single photograph of your brother that could be considered ‘dirty’ by anything but the most depraved of minds. I can show you them all if you want, but…”

“Oh, don’t bother. I’ve heard it all before. You’ve got Jensen telling the same story. Got his head turned around real good before you left.”

Jared ground his teeth together in anger both on his own behalf and on Jensen’s. “Well maybe you should spend your time believing him instead of whoever it is that’s lying to you.”

“A whole group of kids is lying about seeing you out in that field touching my kid brother? Making him take his clothes off?” the guy scoffed.

“And who do you know better, those kids or your brother?” Jared challenged.

The hesitation in the man’s footsteps as he moved forward was all the answer Jared needed. At least there was some hope that the guy could become rational.

“Jensen’s never had a boyfriend before.” The word ‘boyfriend’ seemed to twist strangely out of the man’s mouth as he said it, like it wanted to stay safe inside of him instead of going out in the world.

It took some self-control for Jared to not snip back at him for the perceived insult. He knew that despite the laws changing, it still wasn’t a common thing to see two men together. And just because Jensen’s body was one of the few that could bear as well as give children, his family had no reason to believe that he’d choose to be with another man. There were plenty of boys who had ‘the change’ in them that still went on to marry girls. It had been one of the main arguments against the movement to alter the marriage laws.

“Well then you don’t need to worry, because he still hasn’t had one,” Jared told Jensen’s brother. “I didn’t touch him. Not in that way. And he didn’t ask me to.”

The uncertainty in the man’s eyes grew, but his frown also deepened. “Nobody is going to believe that.”

“Obviously,” Jared said. How could they when Jensen’s own brother thought so little of him?

“There are witnesses, a bunch of them. My dad is getting hassled at the bank because of how morally loose one of his kids is. Jensen had to drop out of college.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that. I am, but we didn’t do anything,” Jared explained again.

“Fat lot of good that does Jensen,” the man exhaled. He didn’t apologize, and Jared didn’t ask him to. That he deserved one was clear, but he’d seen a lot of hopeless men in his life. And he had the feeling that the man standing in front of him just lost his last hope.

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Jensen never once imagined that this would be how his life would turn out. Even when he was young and sickly he’d always had dreams. Now he had nothing. It seemed like forever and a day ago that he walked himself down to the local hotel to talk to that fancy out of town photographer. Something so insignificant shouldn’t have made so much of an impact on his life, but it did.

The stupid thing was that if Jensen had taken a girl out to that field, nobody would ever have cared. Sure they would have shaken their heads and bemoaned the fact that poor Mr. Ackles had a boy who was wild, but they certainly wouldn’t have gone around making trouble for Jensen and his family. Maybe they would have raised a fuss over the girl what with implying that she was ‘loose,’ but more than likely nobody would have ever said a word.

The knowledge of the double standard irritated Jensen all the more. Bad enough he was being accused of doing something that he never did, but the knowledge that his suffering was only because of what he was on the inside was driving him mad. He didn’t do anything, but even his family doubted him. There were too many people telling the same lie.

Logically, Jensen knew that it wasn’t his fault. Robbie’s father had had it in for Jensen’s dad for years. He had always felt that the promotion that brought the Ackleses to Miltonvale was stolen from him. Jensen had never been certain if Robbie’s hate was merely an extension of his father’s or if he truly did despise Jensen based on his own merits.

Jensen supposed that it didn’t matter what the motivations of Robbie and his father were. It was enough to know that they had them, and that they were so spiteful towards Jensen and Jensen’s family that they went so far as to write the dean of Jensen’s university about his, ‘inappropriate conduct.’

There wasn’t any way that Jensen’s father was going to get promoted at work. Sure the whole ordeal had nothing to do with how well his father could perform his job, but the bank couldn’t have scandal associated with its higher ranked managers. Even though Jensen’s supposed indiscretion had nothing to do with finance, the mere hint of something unsavory would give the upper hand to Robbie’s father for any future advancements.

Not for the first time, Jensen wished that he had been born normal. He wished that he had developed a taste for pretty girls. Then maybe people wouldn’t be listening to the lies being told about him. His mother’s knitting circle wouldn’t be ignoring her front and whispering behind her back. The minister wouldn’t look upon him with sad eyes on Sunday mornings.

But he knew that his wishes were hopeless. Every time that he thought he had finally moved past the obstacle of his body, it decided it needed to torture him some more. Going away to college was supposed to be his big escape. It was supposed to have been his chance. Yet instead of getting an opportunity to prove himself, Jensen got a slap in the face and a rude awakening.

Colleges were more devious in the way that they got rid of you. The slipping grades and the subtle pressure from teachers and dorm mates might not be provable to any court, but Jensen knew they were there. Nobody had cried any tears over his departure from the institution except for himself.

A knock sounded on Jensen’s bedroom door. He ignored it in favor of his brooding. It might be a respite from thinking about his shattered dreams, but he was not going to be fooled into hoping about it. The only thing on the other side of the door was somebody else’s disappointment. If Jensen had to deal with that emotion, he’d rather deal with his own instead of his father’s or mother’s or brother’s.

The doorknob rattled a few moments later, and Jensen cursed the fact that he hadn’t gotten into the habit of locking his bedroom door. He had never truly had a reason to do so before.

“So I hear I got you into some trouble,” Jared Padalecki said as he walked into the room, firmly shutting the door behind him.

He was bigger than Jensen remembered him being. And Jensen had to remind himself that it was a trick of his eyes. There wasn’t any way that the man grew any larger. Either that or Jensen’s memory had been playing games with him, marginalizing the appearance of the man in an attempt to have some control over the size of the impact that meeting him had had on Jensen’s life. Or something like that. Jensen should really stop thinking like a head doctor now that there was no hope of him ever obtaining his degree.

“What are you doing here?” the tone that Jensen addressed Jared with was accusatory, but Jensen couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Your brother brought me a present,” Jared said as he pointed at the bruise blossoming on his face.

Jensen winced and looked away. More trouble because of him.

“Hey, it’s not your fault,” Jared told him. Jensen could practically hear the ‘kiddo’ tacked on to the end of the sentence, and it irritated him.

“Of course it is,” Jensen argued, “I’m the one that took you up on your offer. I’m the one who went off alone with you. I’m the one who knows what those people are like, and I was the stupid kid trying to prove that he was all grown up and ready to become a man.”

Jared inexplicably laughed and sat down on the edge of Jensen’s bed uninvited. Jensen’s eyes darted towards the closed door.

“You shouldn’t be doing that.”

“Why not?” Jared asked. “It’s not like everybody doesn’t already think that we’ve done far worse.”

There was a good answer to Jared’s question, but Jensen didn’t know what it was, so he kept his mouth shut. They sat in silence for a while. The clock on the top of Jensen’s dresser ticked along faithfully like the passage of time was a good thing. Jensen prayed bitterly that it would just stop. Time had done nothing but make his existence continually worse.

Then Jared clapped his large hands down on his thighs and announced, “Well, I suppose that I shouldn’t put this off any longer.”

Before Jensen could even ask what the photographer was talking about, Jared was sliding off the edge of the bed and getting on his knees. One of his hands disappeared inside of his pants pocket only to reappear with a worn silver ring.

“Jensen Ackles, will you marry me?” he asked.

“What? No!” Jensen blurted out as he scrambled backwards on the covers of his bed to get away from the crazy man. He’d heard rumors of how loony pressmen were, but this was the first evidence he’d seen to prove it.

Jared didn’t look the least bit surprised by his rejection. “I normally wouldn’t ask this way…”

“Oh, you’ve had practice on asking that question? Makes me feel so much better,” Jensen mumbled as he tried to remember where he left his baseball bat.

“… but I didn’t want my proposal to have that business arrangement feel to it, and your brother made it clear that I only had until your mother took the roast out of the oven to ask you,” Jared continued as if he didn’t hear Jensen’s comment.

“What does my brother have to do with your lunacy?” Jensen demanded.

Jared fiddled with the silver ring for a moment before shrugging. “I told you he came to me.”

“And talked you into making an honest man out of me? We both know you didn’t do anything.”

“That isn’t exactly true, is it? I opened the door even if I didn’t… steal the goods.”

“That’s a horrible analogy and doesn’t explain things at all.”

“Your father is about to lose his job,” Jared told him.

Jensen froze. That wasn’t possible. It just… Jensen was an adult, and it shouldn’t be possible for his actions to so directly impact his father.

“Money is a dirty business, Jensen. I’ve been around the world. I’ve seen a lot of things, and when it comes to greed, people have no personal boundaries. The power it wields isn’t pretty, and the politics to gain it are despicable.”

“No,” Jensen denied with a shake of his head, “my father would have told me if there was trouble.”

“Maybe your father wanted to spare you,” Jared said softly.

“He… it’s impossible. He hasn’t done anything!” Jensen yelled, and he didn’t care who heard him.

“Neither have you, yet it isn’t stopping them. Sometimes there are just bad people in life.”

“Save your philosophy,” Jensen snipped. “Bad people shouldn’t win.”

“They shouldn’t,” Jared agreed, “but sometimes you have to do something unexpected to win.”

“I don’t even know you,” Jensen said as he sat back down on his bed.

“And I don’t know you either, but I do feel responsible for this. I don’t want your family to lose out over this, and I think that we could make something mutually beneficial from this arrangement. I’m rarely home. My job takes me all over the globe, and as of two days ago I lost the rental agreement that I had. I’m going to need to get a house, and I’ll need somebody at home to take care of it while I’m gone.”

That didn’t sound too terribly much like an incentive to Jensen, and the expression on his face must have said as much because Jared opened his mouth to explain, “My landlady wasn’t much for your brother starting a fight in her living room. She also wasn’t much for letting out to a queer.”

“You… I’m sorry. This is all my fault,” Jensen mumbled, a new wave of guilt washing over him.

“It isn’t. I may not advertise my preferences, but I’m not exactly against having a man on my arm instead of a woman. I would have gotten evicted at some point anyway. So at least I was given the boot over somebody as handsome as you are.”

The blush that stole over Jensen’s features was unflattering. He knew this from experience. It made his freckles stand out and the paleness of his un-flushed skin look sickly white. “I’m not handsome,” came out of his mouth naturally. He wasn’t, and he couldn’t have Jared lying to him.

“Jensen! Supper!” Jensen’s mother called up the stairs, cutting off whatever response Jared was about to make. The call was a welcome relief, and Jensen wasn’t too proud to admit that he almost fled from his bedroom in his haste to be away from Jared.

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The conversation around the dinner table was stilted. Nobody would look anybody directly in the eye, but when Jensen’s father broke out a bottle of scotch after dinner and offered Jensen a glass, he knew that things were far worse than what had previously been told to him.

He found out that Jared hadn’t been lying. At least, he hadn’t been telling falsehoods about Jensen’s father’s job or the way that Jensen’s brother had gone to confront him. Jensen still believed that Jared was misrepresenting Jensen’s attractiveness.

After a while, there wasn’t much left to say. The future was a bleak place, no longer shiny and tempting. Jensen felt lightheaded and funny, but he wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or the news that was upsetting his body the most. Neither was normal for him, and neither was particularly welcome. The booze made it difficult to focus. Everything seemed hazy.

The only thing that he could be certain about was that one way or the other his life was about to change. Either his father lost his job because of the ‘improper’ actions of his son, or Jensen went to live with a man he barely even knew. Neither option was a good one, but one of them would spare his family from further suffering.

When he asked to be alone with Jared for a moment, he didn’t have to explain why. Everyone in the room already knew what was going to happen, but Jensen didn’t want an audience for it. He didn’t want anybody to see his tears because they weren’t going to be happy ones. Besides, real men didn’t cry, and Jensen would like to continue the lie that he was one for as long as possible.

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March was a terrible month to get married in. Spring hadn’t yet fully blossomed, and winter wasn’t completely gone. There was snow melting into the brown grass out on the lawn, and the minister looked about as happy to be performing the ceremony as Jared was to be attending it.

Neither of them looked quite as miserable as Jensen did though. Jared felt like an absolute heel for taking comfort in the fact that his spouse was hurting more than he was. He supposed that it was natural that he be the one who handled it better. Jared was making a sacrifice to redeem a man that he inadvertently wronged by pursuing his career. It was a respectable act. He, at least, had a true choice in the matter.

Jensen had no such comfort to hide in.

Only Jensen’s immediate family attended the ceremony. He refused to go down the aisle like a bride would, and his father didn’t give him away. Jensen’s mother managed to take a few pictures using the family camera, and she indulged Jared by taking a few more on his own.

Jensen didn’t smile for their wedding photographs, and Jared didn’t have the heart to tell him that it made the pictures all the more poignant. Somehow he knew that Jensen wouldn’t want to hear about how much the camera loved him. Whether Jared liked it or not, he was going to be spending the rest of his life with the man. There was no need to rile Jensen up.

Their reception dinner was a roast chicken served to them on Jensen’s mother’s china. Their cake was a yellow one that she whipped up the day before and frosted that same night. Jared’s eye told informed him that he could see the spots where she cried onto it, however impossible that might be, and the thought made his stomach turn just a bit. Their first dance, their only dance, was serenaded to them by Nat King Cole on a scratchy sounding radio in the kitchen. They didn’t do more than sway together because Jared was a horrible dancer, and Jensen had never done anything but lead.

Jared spent his first night as a married man on the couch in his new in-law’s den. Jensen slept up the stairs in his old bedroom. It was likely the first unanimous agreement that everybody had in regards to their marriage.

They left for Jared’s home the next day. Or rather, they headed back to where Jared’s job was because Jared couldn’t exactly bring his new husband to the tiny bedroom that he had been letting out for the past few years. Technically his lease was good until the end of the month, but he thought that Jensen had been through enough that he didn’t need to be subjected to a disapproving stranger.

He rented them a nice hotel room instead, not the honeymoon suite because Jared didn’t think it was appropriate given the circumstances, but a nice one nonetheless. Most of Jensen’s things remained out in the car that they’d driven back in. The beat-up, old clunker was a wedding gift from Jared’s new brother-in-law. It was practical and appreciated given that Jared didn’t actually own his own vehicle.

The company provided transportation for him when he was out on location, and he lived – used to live in a part of town where he could just walk anywhere that he wanted to go. Jared had never had to worry about needing a vehicle before, but he imagined that Jensen would appreciate one.

Jared let Jensen be the first to clean up from their drive. It was the least that he could do, and it gave him time to rifle through his duffle bag to lay out the clothes he was going to be wearing the next day. When Jensen made his way out of the bathroom, he didn’t say a word to Jared – much like he didn’t say anything substantial during their hours of driving.

It took longer than Jared anticipated for him to get the grime of the road off his skin, so he was surprised to see that Jensen was still awake when he came back out to the room. The lights were dim, and Jensen was in nothing more than one of the hotel provided robes. His hair was still damp at its ends, and the overall effect made him look simultaneously older and younger than he was. The fingers on Jared’s right hand twitched as if searching for his camera, and he couldn’t keep his eyes from staring at his spouse.

“I don’t want to have children,” Jensen’s voice seemed deeper than Jared had heard it before, and it shot a little thrill up his spine to think about how the tone of it would only develop over the years.

“Okay,” Jared agreed amiably. He didn’t know if Jensen meant never or just not at the moment, and he didn’t intend to ask. It was a lot to be thinking about given their current situation. Clarification was best left for better days that were far off in their future.

Jensen was perturbed by his response. “Did you even listen to me?” he demanded.

“You said that you didn’t want to have children, and I agreed.”

Teenager that he still was, Jensen rolled his eyes at Jared. It was the sort of thing that would’ve gotten Jared in trouble with his parents if he’d been caught doing it, and he wondered if Jensen was trying to pick a fight with him for some reason.

“I can’t… I don’t want to, Jared,” Jensen insisted like Jared was the one who was being unreasonable.

“And I agreed,” Jared stated again. “I’m not sure what we’re fighting about.”

“Consummation!” Jensen blurted out, his eyes wide. He looked alarmingly like he was about to heave the remnants of their roadside dinner out on the bedspread.

“Oh.” There wasn’t a better word that came to mind. Yes, Jared knew that they needed to consummate their marriage to make it truly official. He had every intention of having sexual relations with his husband as he didn’t plan on living a sexless existence for the rest of his life, and he wasn’t the sort of man that broke his vows. It didn’t matter that those promises were made under less than ideal circumstances.

“Yes, ‘oh’,” Jensen mocked as he fiddled with the ties to his robe.

Jared was not a virgin. He assumed that Jensen had figured this fact out, but that wasn’t the most important matter that needed to be addressed. The problem was that Jared already knew what his sexual preferences were. When he was a young and foolish, he had been that stupid boy in the field. He’d been guilty of the crimes that Jensen wasn’t. He’d also spent months being terrified that he’d gotten his girlfriend with child.

As he aged, he pursued his interest in men. He found their company preferable for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was that they couldn’t get pregnant. At least, most of them couldn’t. It allowed Jared to enjoy penetrating his partners without the worry of leaving bastard children behind him. There were complications of course. Lying with another man still wasn’t looked upon with great favor in some circles, and unmarried sex was not encouraged by anybody except for bohemians and deviants.

But Jared hadn’t had to think about the more serious repercussions of penetration since he started channeling his impulses into his appreciation for the male form. Certainly some of the soldiers brought home unsavory illnesses from abroad, but Jared had spent enough time in the medical tents and buildings during the war to recognize most of the signs of a sexual disease. If he saw any symptoms, he didn’t engage in intercourse with them. It had gotten him called a sissy and a tease, but it had kept him free of that sort of illness.

“We can just do other things,” Jared offered after a few uncomfortable moments.

Jensen went pale. “What other things?”

Jensen’s reaction would be amusing if the situation in general weren’t so sad. Jared could only imagine what tall tales Jensen had been told about what men did together. Worse, he could imagine that there was an entire list of acts that Jensen, and all of the young ladies of any standing, had been told never to perform.

“Jensen,” Jared said the name softly as he slowly moved over to the bed that his husband was sitting on, “you don’t need to be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” the quiver in Jensen’s voice as he spoke contradicted his words.

A gentle smile was all that Jared answered him with. Arguing about Jensen’s fears or readiness would do neither of them any good. Their marriage needed to be consummated. Even though they could just lie about it, Jared believed that there had been enough falsehoods told about their relationship already.

The breaths panting out of Jensen’s mouth came faster as Jared moved closer to him. His eyes were wide and blown. Jared would have liked them to be that way because of arousal and excitement, but he knew that was a foolish hope. Fear was the only feeling that was mastering Jensen at this point. Anger might come later, but there wasn’t time for later.

Their first kiss had been in Jensen’s family church. It had been awkward and uncomfortable. Jensen’s inexperience had little to do with that, but Jared had gleaned enough information from that one peck to know that his husband was rather green when it came to intimate relations. He never asked Jensen if he was a virgin. It was plain that he was, and Jared could well remember what it was like to be a young man trying to prove himself.

Their second kiss was both better and worse. There were no weeping eyes watching them, no relieved minister exhaling out his praises beside them. They were alone in their intimacy. But Jensen began to tremble when Jared’s lips pushed harder against his own, his fear morphing quickly into terror as Jared’s tongue tried to gain entrance.

Backing away was the only option that Jared had at that point. Stories about unwilling brides and ‘conquering’ them had always flown rampantly around his ears - first in the war where boys were eager to prove their manhood by spinning tall tales and then in the press rooms where men just spun tales because it was what they enjoyed doing. But Jared wasn’t the sort of man to force his body upon another’s, not even if society would grant him that right because of a piece of paper.

“Get some rest,” Jared whispered as he pressed a chaste kiss to Jensen’s temple.

To his credit, Jensen didn’t look at him in confusion or try to argue the point. He merely looked grateful and scrambled under the covers as quickly as possible, eager to put a shield of cotton between himself and his husband. When Jared slid into the other side of the bed, Jensen didn’t tense. It made Jared’s heart flutter just a little to know that he’d made the right decision.

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Work was something that Jensen had been brought up to value. When Jared announced over breakfast that he needed to go there, Jensen only smiled and nodded. Even though Jensen was alone in a strange city, he also knew that he was now reliant on his husband’s paycheck. Demanding Jared’s attention and coddling wasn’t going to do either of them any good. Jensen couldn’t even say that he wanted Jared’s considerations, and he was doubly uncertain of Jared’s willingness to give them.

Honor was one thing. Love was quite another. Whatever was between them, love wasn’t it. It couldn’t be, and Jensen was shockingly okay with that. He’d known quite a few families that had arranged suitable marriages for their children. Oh, maybe it wasn’t like in the old days, but there were those couples who were just expected to wed even though you could see in their eyes that there wasn’t romantic love shared between them. It maybe wasn’t the happiest of existences, but it was better than being homeless.

Jared left him with some cash to cover any expenses. He bought Jensen a map of the city in case he wanted to go exploring, and even was so kind as to circle the building that he worked at on it. Not that Jensen had any intention of getting near Jared’s place of work. He wasn’t going to be the interfering type of spouse. Besides that, he knew exactly how their marriage was going to appear to Jared’s coworkers.

The problem with being alone in a strange city was that Jensen quickly ran out of things to do. He wasn’t a tourist, and it felt wrong to spend Jared’s money that way. He had little of his own cash to spend, and he knew that it was better to be frugal with what he did have to his name lest something happen to either Jared or Jared’s desire to stay married.

Jensen wrote to his parents and walked to the post office to mail his letter. There wasn’t much to say. Only that they had arrived safely and that Jensen missed them, but it at least took up some of his time. After that, Jensen just began to wander the streets, carefully avoiding any of the ‘bad areas’ that Jared had marked on the map.

After an hour or so, boredom began to worry at Jensen’s mind. He didn’t want to think about his situation, but there was little else left to distract him. One thought led to another, and before he knew it, he was walking towards Jared’s old place of residence. It wasn’t marked on the map, but Jensen had seen the address on Jared’s driver’s license when he had presented it for their marriage license. Jensen had always been good at memorizing things. Usually his desire to read and learn kept him out of trouble, but there was always an exception to the rule.

Standing in front of the large house that Jared rented a room in, Jensen knew that his inquisitiveness was about to get him into a pickle. He didn’t even have the option to walk away. His luck was as rotten as ever because as soon as he stopped to double check the address on the front of the building, a woman’s face appeared in the window.

That she recognized him was clear, though he hadn’t a clue how. At least, he didn’t have a clue until she started hurling Jared’s photographs at him and yelling obscenities. It was almost surreal to hear such barroom language coming out of a lady’s mouth. Apparently, Jensen was a misleading whore who had tempted a good, pure boy like Jared into deviance. Maybe the insane laughter that bubbled out of Jensen’s throat wasn’t the appropriate reaction to the situation, but it was the one that he had.

It strangely felt good.

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When Jared arrived back at their hotel room, he wasn’t expecting it to be covered with pictures from his personal collection. He doubly was not anticipating that they would be his pictures of Jensen.

“What happened?” he asked as he came over to the small table that the room boasted, looking over his husband’s shoulder at the mess of broken frames and glass that was resting on top of it.

“Your landlady decided that your pictures were only fit for the gutter. Or that I was. She wasn’t exactly clear on that point,” Jensen mused as he maneuvered a bit of wooden frame together, paste bottle in hand to reattach it to the other pieces.

“You don’t have to do that,” Jared said as he reached out to stop Jensen’s hand.

Jensen batted Jared away. “I don’t have much else to do.”

It was a true statement, so Jared let it slide. “I have to go out of town for an assignment,” he said as he turned and pulled the other chair out from under the table.

Jensen’s movements ceased for a moment, but continued soon enough, his brow wrinkling in concentration. “Well, you do have an important job,” was his only remark.

Did his husband have to make the conversation difficult?

“It’s not that I want to leave,” Jared told him.

Jensen quirked an eyebrow at that. “Of course you do. I want to leave. Anybody in their right mind would want to leave. Don’t think that I don’t know this is uncomfortable for you just like it is for me.”

Jared took a fortifying breath. “Let me clarify. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“But you have to,” Jensen countered, “and it’ll be good for our budget if you stay employed.”

“Are you hell bent on being reasonable about this?” Jared asked. It wasn’t that he wanted Jensen quaking in fury or tears; it was just that he didn’t trust the weird calm the young man was exhibiting.

“Jared, I don’t have a choice in the matter. I’ve never had much choice on anything in life, and I’ve shed my tears over it. I… I’m not going to have the life I wanted and dreamed of. It was all just a stupid, silver screen fantasy anyway. But I can be supportive, and I will do my best to be a good husband,” Jensen’s lips fumbled over the last word, and he looked back down at his project.

The picture inside the frame that Jensen was working on was torn. It wasn’t worth salvaging. The glass had shattered and the tears and cuts on the paper were severe. If it was any other situation, Jared would tell Jensen to leave it be. It was hardly the best picture that Jared had of him, and with the handy convenience of being married to the man, Jared was certain he could obtain far better than even the best of his pictures from the field. But Jensen’s gaze was intent on his repairs, and it wasn’t hurting anything to let him have his distraction.

“We’ll need a home,” Jared decided to change the subject.

Jensen glanced up at him again but didn’t say anything. His gaze implied that he was trying to determine if Jared was a dullard or if he thought that Jensen was.

“If I’m away for a few weeks, I can’t be here choosing out a new living arrangement,” Jared continued.

“A few weeks?” Jensen echoed.

“It’s a big assignment.” Jared left the, ‘not like the Miltonvale piece,’ unsaid.

“I… that is a lot of time to spend in a hotel room,” Jensen observed as he pushed a piece of broken glass around with his fingertip.

“Which is why I want you to start looking for a home while I’m gone,” Jared explained. “I’ve got a realtor who you can work with, and I’ll give you a budget for what we can afford.”

“I can’t do that,” Jensen protested.

“Look, you’ll be using it more than I will anyway. I didn’t tell you that I’d be gone a lot to make you feel better about our arrangement. I truly will not be at home that often. It’s only logical that you pick the place.”

“You’d trust me to do that? You don’t even know me.”

Jared licked his lips and nodded. “True, but I obviously didn’t know my previous landlady all that well either. And I do know that you didn’t marry for my fame.”

Jensen blinked at him for a moment before asking, “You’re famous?”

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Watching Jared pack had been uncomfortable. As much as spending so much time with a stranger had not been fun, Jared had also been the only vaguely familiar presence that was readily accessible. Now that he was leaving, Jensen felt like he was being cast adrift at sea. Part of him was tempted to run home to his parent’s place until Jared came back, but that would only serve to stir up old controversies.

Gossips weren’t easily swayed from their stories. Jared might have made an honest man out of him, but Jensen knew full well that his name was still lower than dirt back in Miltonvale. Going back never solved anything, only going forward.

“I’ll drive you to the airport tomorrow,” Jensen offered as Jared zipped his travel bag shut.

“You don’t have to do that.”

Jensen shrugged. “It’s something my mom would do for my dad, you know?”

“I don’t want you doing it out of some misplaced duty,” Jared said.

“It isn’t misplaced. It’s just… I want to make this, this relationship as functional as it can be. Ignoring your existence isn’t going to help.”

The words might have been more convincing if there weren’t tears in Jensen’s eyes as he spoke them. Half of the energy in his speech was directed at himself. This wasn’t what he had wanted, but it wasn’t horrible either. Jared hadn’t beaten him and wasn’t coming back to the hotel at night reeking of liquor and cigarettes. He hadn’t even insisted on receiving his conjugal rights, a fact that alternately relieved and worried Jensen. It would be so much easier if Jared was the one to instigate their sexual intimacy. Just letting it happen held a certain appeal even though Jensen knew it to be the coward’s way out.

“Do you want to know why I did it?” Jared blurted out, jerking Jensen out of his thoughts.

“Why you did what?” Jensen regretted the words immediately after he said them. There wasn’t much he knew about Jared, and the event he was referencing was obvious.

“I did it because of guilt,” Jared told him.

“It wasn’t your fault.” The forgiveness was easy to give on Jensen’s part. It was more his error than Jared’s and neither of them had ever lied about what truly happened

“Not over you,” Jared clarified.

“My family…”

“Yes. Exactly,” Jared cut him off, “your family.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jared stared at the top of his bag for a moment as if it held the mysteries of the universe inside of it. “You’ll notice that I haven’t called any of my relatives to inform them of our union.”

Shamefully, Jensen hadn’t noticed that. The selfish need to focus on himself, protect himself had kept him from even inquiring on the subject of any new in-laws he might have gained from their marriage.

“We are… estranged, Jensen,” Jared spoke softly, but Jensen could still hear the sadness in his voice.

“Because of your proclivities?” Jensen asked. It wasn’t unheard of for a man or woman who favored the same sex to be outcast. Legality didn’t dictate morality.

Jared laughed bitterly. “Yes, but not in the way that you are thinking. When I was your age, younger actually, I had a girlfriend.”

The news wasn’t surprising to Jensen. From what he’d been told by the doctor, most men tried to be with women first. It was highly suggested that even though he had ‘the change’ inside of him that he also attempt to court and marry a woman to make life easier.

“I had sexual intercourse with her,” Jared told him.

Flinching at the news wasn’t an option no matter how much Jensen would have liked to do so at the crude words. Jared’s age and lifestyle wouldn’t lead him into staying celibate. Jensen had seen his fair share of quick marriages before soldiers were shipped off to the war, and he’d seen enough hollow eyes when those that survived came back. It might not be a topic for polite company, but Jensen had heard enough whispers to know the kinds of things that grown men did.

“It was her idea,” Jared continued. “I was young and flattered and didn’t once think about why she would be the one pursuing me. Then, not a month later, she told me that she was pregnant.”

Jensen couldn’t meet Jared’s eyes at that statement. His husband had a bastard child. The knowledge was somehow devastating.

“It wasn’t mine. I didn’t know for certain at first, but the more she said it was, the more I knew it wasn’t. Too many things started to make sense: how she had no pain when she took me inside, how insistent she had been that we be together in that way, how she would sometimes ask me to lie for her and say that we were out on a date…”

“She had been with another man?” Jensen guessed, trying to hide the relief he felt at knowing that he didn’t have a bastard step-child out there.

“For a long time,” Jared confirmed. “I had been played the fool, but her family was wealthy. Her parents were friends of my parents. There was great pressure for me to marry her and take her child as my own. I had, after all, sampled from her outside of marriage. Her child could have been my own if not for the fact that she was already pregnant.”

“I refused, and my family took exception to my refusal. The man who had impregnated her wasn’t a good person. She had been duped by him the same as I had been by her. She had been my friend long before she was my girlfriend, and I could have spared her from being labeled a whore.”

“It wasn’t your responsibility,” Jensen reminded him.

“It wasn’t, but not causing something is different from not helping to solve it. Her parents were devastated, my parents were at first angry with me and then disappointed. If I loved her enough to fuck her, then why couldn’t I just marry her? I should’ve kept my dick in my pants if I didn’t want to be a real man.”

Jensen bit his lip. “So I’m penance?”

Jared shook his head. “No, Jensen. I didn’t want you and your parents to go through what hers did. And with you, I had actually helped get you in trouble.”

“You still didn’t have to marry me. Not because of her, not because of anybody,” Jensen wanted to make certain that Jared knew that. Bad enough Jensen owed a stranger a debt.

“Yeah, well, you’re also easy on the eyes, so there is that,” Jared deflected Jensen’s words with a tiny smile on his lips.

Jensen let the unnecessary compliment slide.

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Jared wasn’t used to waking up with a body pressed close to his. His liaisons typically were over and done with in the hours of the night, and Jensen hadn’t proven himself much for touching. If the trembling going on was any indication, Jensen still wasn’t much for it.

“Jensen?” Jared asked groggily. The dim light coming through the curtains of their hotel room barely illuminated the alarm clock that was provided, but it was earlier than either of them normally rose.

“We need to,” Jensen whispered, his hand almost quaking as it made its way down to the pajama bottoms that Jared had worn to bed.

“What?” was the only response that Jared could come up with.

“You’re going away,” Jensen told him.

“To work, not to war,” Jared reminded him as he reached for the switch to the bedside lamp.

“Leave it!” Jensen ordered, sounding almost panicked. “I can’t… not if you can see.”

“I think that is a good sign we shouldn’t be doing this at all,” Jared groaned.

“We need to,” Jensen reiterated. “I won’t be a lie.”

“You aren’t.”

“I am,” Jensen argued. “I’m your absolution, not your husband.”

“Sex won’t change that.”

Jensen pushed him on to his back and whispered, “Yes it will.”

This time when Jensen reached for Jared’s pajama bottoms, he let the quaking hand reach its goal. There was only so much fight a man could put up when being offered sex from a husband as attractive as Jared’s even if it was a bad idea.

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Hussy was the word that popped into Jensen’s head every time he looked into a mirror. He hadn’t taken Jared inside, so he knew that in the very strictest sense it couldn’t be true, but he had instigated intimacy. Worse, he had insisted on it all because he had needed to feel like he wasn’t just some project to Jared.

In retrospect, the concept was riddled with bad logic. Not sleeping tended to do that to a man’s brain, and it wasn’t like Jensen could even blame Jared for allowing him to make such a foolish error. Jensen was the one who had insisted. Jensen was the one who touched the other man’s privates in lewd ways until Jared couldn’t take it anymore.

Jensen was the one trying to irrationally compete with a long gone girlfriend who had betrayed and wronged his husband. And wasn’t that a kicker? Pure, despicably virginal Jensen Ackles felt the need to compete with a woman that had caused his almost stranger husband problems. It was sad. Worse, Jensen knew that woman still meant more to his husband than he did. She might have long been buried in Jared’s past, but he’d known her in a way that he hadn’t had the time to know Jensen.

Desperation was an unattractive trait, and Jensen had worried over Jared’s confession until he couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t take being ignored or looked down upon or being treated like some fragile creature. So he had begged Jared to make him his equal when that task was impossible.

It was only Jared’s sanity that had kept him from making a terrible mistake. It was Jared’s goodness that only took Jensen’s hand instead of his body, and it was his giving nature that gave Jensen his own hand in return. When the sun had risen in the sky, Jensen had realized his mistake. But by then it had been too late to fix. Even though Jared had been polite and courteous that next morning, Jensen just knew that Jared’s opinion of him was lower than ever.

The resolve, the need to become a better person gnawed at Jensen’s insides. He needed to prove to both Jared and the world that he wasn’t a pathetic waste of space. Maybe he’d had to leave college, and maybe he was nothing more than some bizarre housewife, but that didn’t mean he had to stay that way. The least that he could do was become a good bizarre housewife.

He took to house hunting with a passion. The budget that Jared had left him with was significantly higher than what Jensen had anticipated, but he didn’t allow the numbers to go to his head. A bargain was always to be had, and he wasn’t going to throw away Jared’s money for no good reason.

By the time that he settled on the house, signing for both Jared and himself, his real estate agent looked like Jensen had beaten him with a stick. The seller looked worse. Jensen couldn’t bring himself to care. They’d been the unfortunate recipients of his fervor to prove himself, but they’d also been out to scam him. Young, fresh faced and ostensibly in love, he had to have reeked of being a ripe target.

Decorating the house was something of a letdown. It was lonely moving his things into his new home by himself, and it was mortifying to unpack all of Jared’s things without him being there. Their marriage allowed Jensen legal rights to all of Jared’s belongings, but it felt more like spying than Jensen was comfortable with.

It seemed like it took forever to move all of the boxes out of the storage unit that held Jared’s earthly possessions, but it did keep Jensen busy. His rusty car had a good engine in it, and he didn’t have time to worry about his harlotry when he was sweating and covered in grime from carrying boxes.

The house came with some furniture in it, and Jensen did what he could with it until Jared returned. One of the few fights that he’d heard his mother have with his father was over the mattress on their bed and its debatable comfort. As odd as his relationship with his husband was, Jensen thought he should wait to go purchase something that they were both going to have to live with for the next several years. Permission to go house hunting was one thing. Sleeping surfaces were an entirely different matter.

The actual décor of their new home was also something that Jensen didn’t want to mess with too much. Certainly Jared had given him the right to do whatever he pleased with it. He hadn’t been lying when he talked about how much time he didn’t spend at home. The calendar had flipped entire months as Jared was sent from one assignment to another without setting foot back in the city. Jensen had written the mortgage payments out of the new checkbook that had arrived for him without ever seeing his husband’s face.

Jared called and sent letters when he could. Jensen appreciated being kept in the loop, but it didn’t make the loneliness any better. Being alone wasn’t the issue. Jensen was used to being by himself. He liked to read, and Jared’s storage locker had yielded a good number of books that kept his mind preoccupied whenever he grew tired of rearranging Jared’s photographs on the green walls of their home. But he had no personal connection to the place, and books were only a comfort for so long.

A cycle started up where Jensen would decorate until he was lonely and then read until he was lonely again. The pattern kept him busy, but it also drove him to dig through more of Jared’s boxes.

It was disturbing to see how many pictures of Jensen that Jared had matted and even framed. Oh, there were other people in Jared’s collection. There was even an entire series of dogs and landscapes and an inexplicable assortment of pictures made up entirely of ducks. But the photographs of Jensen dominated the other collections volume wise. There were far more of him than any other subject.

And if seeing himself look so… not himself in so many photographs was odd, hanging them on the wall was even worse. The Jensen Ackles in Jared’s pictures was confident, mischievous and strong. He was some fey creature that held the stars in his hand. The fact that Jensen was the source for them didn’t matter. Clearly Jared was an amazing photographer.

As much as possible, Jensen tried not to put his own face on display. It felt vain and pretentious to do so, but it was Jared’s home as well, so he sprinkled a few of them around. He didn’t mind looking at that Jensen’s face. It didn’t look like the face of a whore who tried, and ultimately failed, to seduce his own husband out of misplaced jealousy.

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Marriage was hell on Jared’s life. It wasn’t that Jensen was demanding, far from it. The young man was endlessly understanding and sympathetic each time that Jared had to contact him to let him know that he was yet again changing his travel plans for work and not coming home. Jared had overheard muffled conversations from other married men that made him more uncomfortable than anything Jensen ever said to him.

Quite frankly, it was his sex life that was driving Jared up the wall. He hadn’t been on exactly promiscuous before, but he’d had some understandings with a few men. He’d taken advantage of those understandings when necessary. It had never been a big deal.

Despite the fact that some of Jared’s coworkers had no scruples about telling their wives that they loved them one moment and taking off to chase skirt the next, he wasn’t that type of person. Maybe Jared hadn’t married his husband out of love, but that didn’t give him an excuse to go find a place to stick his dick for the night. Being a faithful husband and having an understanding with another man were not compatible situations, and Jared chose to be the faithful husband.

The fact that Jensen was young and attractive made Jared’s predicament worse. The more that he talked to Jensen, the more that he liked him as a person. So understanding, so pleasant, so fucking sexy – Jensen was driving Jared insane without even knowing it.

Jared had left his husband without fully cementing his place in their marriage bed. At the time it had been the right thing to do. Jensen had been terrified. Sex had been a bad idea. It was only Jared’s unsatisfied libido that was telling him differently now – his libido and his paranoid mind.

Jared had met a lot of men in his life, and he knew that there were enough of them out there that would gladly insinuate themselves into the life of a lonely newlywed without a second thought. Jensen was gorgeous and emotionally vulnerable, the perfect target for another man to seduce. Only Jensen’s own morals would keep him from falling prey. It wasn’t like he knew that Jared loved him.

Christ, that was a sticky wicket. How exactly was Jared supposed to explain that he’d gone and fallen in love with the man that he married for convenience? More importantly, how was he going to get Jensen to believe him? A few phone calls and a couple of notes shouldn’t have affected Jared like they had. He’d like to pretend that they hadn’t. He wanted to think that it was the lack of sexual release that made him ache to see Jensen again, but he had the bad feeling that he was lying to himself.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Meeting Jared at the airport like some in love idiot wasn’t lying. Jensen assured himself of that repeatedly before he left the house. It was something nice that a husband should do. It wouldn’t reek of desperation. That his heart was pounding as he waited for Jared to deboard the plane was just a coincidence. The last time that he’d seen his husband had been an awkward affair. There was bound to be some nervousness.

Jared’s tall frame was easy to recognize amidst the other passengers. He looked thinner than when Jensen had last seen him, but otherwise appeared healthy. Jensen took a moment to observe his husband and compose himself before yelling, “Jared!” out to the world.

Jared’s head jerked almost immediately towards Jensen’s direction, and Jensen swore that his heart felt like it stopped when the seriousness of Jared’s face broke into a grin. He’d seen Jared smile before, known that he had dimples, but somehow the radiance from this grin was different. It was like the sun peeking out from behind the clouds, and Jensen’s heart started thumping because of it. His own lips twitched into an answering grin at the sight, and he tried desperately to school the look into something more acceptable, but his mouth just wouldn’t have it.

The chance to form a proper verbal greeting was also stolen from him. Once Jared was close enough, he yanked Jensen into his arms and mumbled, “I missed you,” into his hair.

The, “Hi?” that Jensen offered back in return was a dud of a line, but Jared’s chuckle indicated that he liked it anyway.

“I’m starving. Let’s go out to dinner,” Jared suggested as soon as he released Jensen from his grip.

“Don’t you want to go home first?” Jensen asked.

“Yeah, Jaybird, don’t you want to go home first?” another man intoned from behind Jared, voice laden with innuendo. The way that Jared’s face clouded over didn’t indicate that he thought very highly of either the intrusion or the intruder.

“Pat,” Jared said as he turned around, “don’t you have an appointment to go to?”

“And miss out on finally meeting the missus? Now, Jared, what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t introduce myself to the one who finally landed you?”

“I’m not his wife,” Jensen snapped before Jared could get a word out.

Pat looked shocked to be reprimanded in such a fashion. “Excuse me?”

“I said that I’m not his wife. I’m his husband, and you sir are no friend of ours.”

It was a tossup over who looked more shocked, Jared or Pat, but the approval in Jared’s eyes was clear. Jensen tried not to let it mean anything to him, but he wasn’t very successful.

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The house that Jensen had picked out for them appealed to Jared. It wasn’t that it felt like a home. That would be too trite for Jared’s taste, and it wasn’t true. But the aesthetic appeal of it was pleasing. It didn’t feel like Jensen’s house or a house meant to please who Jensen thought that Jared was.

It felt like a house that they could grow together in. It was a building that Jared could take pictures of that would mean something. It, for lack of a better term, spoke to him. He would tell Jensen that if his husband ever quit flitting around looking nervous.

“It needs some new paint,” Jensen fretted as he plumped the cushions on the sofa again as if fluffing them would make the decrepit piece of furniture any newer.

And yes, Jared could see that the place needed a new coat of paint. He just didn’t know why Jensen felt it was important to point out to him.

“I thought that three bedrooms would be good to start, right? I mean one for a guest bedroom, one for your office and one for our bedroom. Two seemed too small, but I didn’t want to splurge for a four bedroom, not with the prices that they were asking,” Jensen continued to ramble as he rearranged knickknacks on the shelves. They were unfamiliar to Jared, but he didn’t ask if Jensen had had them shipped from his parent’s house or if Jensen had picked them up at some flea market that he had visited.

“It’s very nice, Jensen. You did good,” Jared reassured his husband.

“Yeah?” Jensen asked. “I mean, yeah. It’s… I got a good deal on it.”

Jared didn’t point out that Jensen had already told him all of this on the phone. He could recognize nervousness the same as any other reasonably functioning human being, and Jensen was displaying it in spades.

“You did good,” he reiterated instead. “Thank you.”

“It was nothing. Just spending your money,” Jensen dismissed with a wave of his hand.

“Our money,” Jared corrected.

Jensen pursed his lips at that and shook his head. “Not really.”

“You’re my husband. It’s our money,” Jared stated firmly.

“I’m your responsibility.”

“You’re my husband. I have a ring on your finger that says so,” Jared countered.

The ring in question was still resting Jensen’s finger. Its battered silver surface didn’t catch the light much, but shine, as far as Jared was concerned, was overrated.

“I’m sorry about how we parted last,” Jensen said to the piece of jewelry as he twisted it around his ring finger. “It was immature of me.”

Jared nodded even though he didn’t exactly share the sentiment of regretting their one sexual encounter. His body would very much like to revisit it.

“You were going through a lot,” Jared offered instead of propositioning his husband, “and it wasn’t exactly a hardship on me.”

“I was being jealous and petty,” Jensen argued.

“Jensen, whether you like it or not, you are young. You don’t have the experiences in life that I’ve had. And moreover, you are allowed to be jealous. You have a right to my affections so long as you realize that they are yours now. I’m not going to be preferring others over you.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Actually, I can. Look, I know that we didn’t start off in a conventional way. I know that this life wasn’t what you had planned, and I know that you don’t love me. But… I do.”

“You do what?” Jensen asked

“I love you.”

“You can’t.”

“But I do,” Jared countered with a little smile.

“You haven’t known me long enough for that!”

“And obviously you don’t know me all that well either otherwise you’d know that I can be irrational when it comes to love,” Jared pointed out.

“But, but,” Jensen sputtered.

“I don’t expect you to do anything about it right now, and I’m not going to make you be intimate with me because of it. I just thought you should know. I don’t want there to be secrets between us, and I think we’ve both had enough lies.”

Jensen was quiet for a moment after Jared stopped speaking. “You don’t even have a ring, Jared. How am I supposed… this is a lot to believe.”

“Then we’ll go ring shopping, for the both of us. We’ll make something new out of this.”

The quiet came back as Jared waited for Jensen’s response. When it finally arrived, Jared didn’t expect it to be, “I like my ring.”

“Pardon?”

“I said that I like my ring. It’s mine now. I don’t need something shiny and new. I kind of like my broken in model,” Jensen’s lips twisted a little at the end of his sentence, and if Jared wasn’t mistaken, there was a hidden meaning in his words.

“Does that mean?” Jared cut his own question off, unsure of what to ask.

“It means that I don’t love you, not yet. But I’d like to try,” Jensen told him.

It was enough of a promise for Jared.

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When Jensen Ackles was born, the doctors didn’t think that he’d ever see his first birthday. When he was forced to marry a stranger, Jensen didn’t want to make his twentieth. But somehow his world kept turning.

Even though his life hadn’t turned out to be anything that he’d hoped, he could appreciate what he’d been given. Maybe it was dented and worn, but it was something that was his. Jared’s heart wasn’t something that he could say he would have gone after if life hadn’t gotten in his way. Their worn out house wasn’t the place Jensen had imagined living in, and his uncertain career plans weren’t something that he wanted to face.

But when he eased into bed that night, and saw the smile on Jared’s face as he breached the gulf of space between them, Jensen found a new dream waiting for him.


End file.
